Thursday, 12 October 2017

While I was in Bleach's Berwick Street salon getting a little spendy the other week, I decided to try Bleach's new grey toner and see what it's like! I usually use Makki's colouring mask in Grey, and I love everything about it except that it's quite drying. I wanted to see if Bleach's would be as long lasting, but less drying.

Tuesday, 10 October 2017

This outfit is from when I last went to London with my sister (@ariezabeth on instagram) and she kindly took some quick outfit photos for me. Vending machines still remind me of Japan a lot (they are honestly everywhere there) so when I saw a couple lined up at the train station, I couldn't resist!

Sunday, 8 October 2017

As regular readers will know, I'm a Bleach London fan- their silver shampoo is my absolute favourite and I've dabbled with a good few of their hair dyes now. After my first Bleach Berwick street haul, I went back again! I think I was quite restrained actually... although I had been planning on buying more of their products, a couple of things like the alex-plex were sold out (I'll just have to go back again when things are back in stock, or I could hit up their website or cult beauty).

Tuesday, 26 September 2017

It's my final year of university, and this year one of my goals (apart from studying and all that) is to really get out and enjoy Leeds. It's such a cool, vibrant city and I want to make the most of it- I don't have long left as a student and I also don't know if I'll be here after I graduate (probably not, sadly). So here is a list of places, some I've been to before and some I haven't, that I want to go to this year in Leeds.

Thursday, 14 September 2017

So my final year of uni is gonna start in a week or so, (I study Japanese at Leeds) and I'm super nervous. I think because it's the last year, it feels like my whole future is riding on it. Which is kind of true, but it's also silly to worry too much about it I guess. I both love and hate the feeling of a new academic year: a whole new leaf, but at the same time a tonne of different stresses. I have a lot of goals for next year, and while I really want to do well in uni, I also want to do well outside uni: spend lots of time with my friends, get out and explore Leeds more, and carry on blogging regularly. So here are my goals for final year:

Monday, 11 September 2017

Cliché as it is, I loooove autumn, so without even realising it most of the things I've bought recently have tended to be cozy and perfect for autumn, like tea and candles. Fellow autumn lovers, read on!

Friday, 8 September 2017

I'm still trying to use up and slim down my beauty products, and this is the latest batch of empties. A lot of the products this month were things I really love and old faithfuls that I buy time after time, and there were a couple of little treats as well.

Wednesday, 6 September 2017

Anyone who knows me IRL knows that I'm a pretty serial outfit repeater... I tend to buy a new piece and then get absolutely obsessed and wear it again as soon as I've washed it. This shirt is definitely one of those pieces. I picked it up from depop a few months ago (I blogged about it in my new in fashion haul) and it's been on heavy rotation ever since. It's thin enough for summer, but the colour means it's also perfect for autumn/winter too! I hadn't planned to take outfit photos that day, but when I saw this wall, I had a classic blogger "this wall is cool stop everything and take my picture!!?" moment and made my sister take a few snaps.

Monday, 4 September 2017

Exciting news today! As you'll have gathered from the title of this post, I made my first youtube video! I decided to film myself dying my hair grey because my review of Makki's hair colouring mask in grey is one of my most read posts by far. I figured that if I was going to make a Youtube video, I might as well make it useful!

I've been mulling over trying youtube and teaching myself how to edit videos for a while. So when I had some free time this summer I decided to take the plunge and film myself dying my hair! It was suuch a learning curve, and it really made me respect youtubers for how long editing takes...

So here is my baby! I hope you enjoy it!

I have a couple of other videos I want to make, definitely a room/plant tour of my uni room in Leeds, and I might do some more fashion/ hair dye reviews depending on how much time I have, so go ahead and subscribe to my youtube channel if that sounds like your cup of tea <3 <3

Thanks for reading/ watching!! If you have anything you want me to film, let me know and I might do it??
-Amy xoxo

Thursday, 31 August 2017

Can you believe I've been blogging for five years?? Although I didn't blog too regularly at first, I've been blogging on this lil corner of the internet for five years as of this august. Even though it's just a hobby, I'm pretty proud of how much things have improved around here (just have a quick glance at my first couple of posts!!) I think I've really stepped up my game, especially in the last couple of years- around halfway in to my year in Japan I bought a camera, invested in a domain and a proper design for the blog, and I spent more time writing more and better posts. And then 500 posts just kind of happened. So to celebrate I thought I'd dredge through the archives and put together a little round up of my most popular posts so far:

Tuesday, 29 August 2017

I finally visited Bleach's Berwick Street salon in Soho the other week. The shop itself has just been redone, and Bleach's second line of products had just been launched, so I couldn't get there fast enough! I didn't get many pictures of inside, (because I'd feel like a creep taking pictures while people were getting their hair done) but it's really stylish- black with huge mirrors and a couple of cute plants with all their products lined up at the front. I think I was pretty restrained and I only bought a few things, but they're super cool and I already have a tonne of other things I want to buy, so there's a lil wishlist here too.

Sunday, 27 August 2017

I'm so on board with SS17 trends like fishnets and coloured round sunglasses, so when I picked up these tights and sunglasses from ebay a couple of weeks ago, I practically ran to go and style them up. I paired the fishnets with these black platform shoes from Garage (long time readers will remember I used to wear these pretty much every day), this skirt I picked up in H&M years ago for £3(!!) and then chopped shorter. Finishing up is this vans shirt I bought from WEGO in Harajuku last year (Wego Harajuku haul)

Friday, 25 August 2017

I love Japanese architecture- something about the multitude of signs and neon in the cities, the grey and ugly tiled apartment buildings, and seeing 止まれ written on the roads makes it seem immediately different to here in the UK. I took a tonne of pictures while I was exploring on my year abroad, and I didn't get round to sharing them all, so I started this mini series sharing some of the pictures of random places I found aesthetically pleasing. Enjoy!

Wednesday, 23 August 2017

I had a little unintentional blog hiatus last week- my family went on a spontaneous holiday in Cornwall and the internet was every bit as nonexistent as you'd expect from a valley in the middle of the countryside. I had a great holiday, but I couldn't post this collective haul of a few things I've picked up over the last month and a half or so. I think I've got a nice haul here: a mix of beauty and lifestyle items- not forgetting the all important tea!

Thursday, 10 August 2017

Another empties post today- I'm still on a mission to use up all my old half empty beauty and makeup items. I'm not aiming for minimalism zero- stuff perfection, but I am trying to pare down things a little so I don't end up hoarding things until they go off (case in point: 5 year old gloopy nail varnish that is completely unusable.) Anyway, here are the things I've used up in the past month or so :) This month I finished a couple of bits of makeup too, which feels like an achievement.

Thursday, 3 August 2017

So recently I've tried lavender hair, and I wanted to share my experience using Crazy Color's Lavender hair dye. I have mixed feelings on this dye- it was affordable and looked gorgeous on my silver-toned hair, it also made my hair feel great. Sadly, it is quite a high maintenance look- it washes out almost completely after 2 washes, so you need to top up the colour quite regularly.

Sunday, 30 July 2017

This is going to be the last post about my long weekend in Madrid- where we stayed. I think we managed to find the ideal location- a really cute airbnb on the 7th floor of a building on Gran Via. It was super close to Santo Domingo station on the Metro, which was great for when we were going back to the airport with our bags, but for the rest of the time the apartment was in the centre of town so we didn't need to take the Metro and just walked everywhere.

Friday, 28 July 2017

I didn't take outfit pictures every day in Madrid- it was pretty intensely hot, reaching up to 40 at one point (which is why my hair isn't looking it's best...), but I did manage to snag these pictures of me on the Saturday, when we visited two of the most picturesque places in Madrid, in my opinion- the botanical gardens and the crystal palace.

Thursday, 27 July 2017

For the Sunday of my long weekend in Madrid, we decided to visit the Temple of Debod- an Egyptian temple which was transported to Spain! We also checked out the nearby rose garden in the parque del oeste.

Tuesday, 25 July 2017

After we'd visited the Botanic Gardens, we went on to the Parque del Buen Retiro. It's a huge park and it was nice to get into the shade and relax a little.

On the way to the park, we spotted this 'nutelleria'. I wish I'd gone and got some food, but it was waaay to hot to eat anything. The Parque del buen retiro was huge and there weren't too many people there- probably most people were sheltering indoors from the sun. We found a nice shady bench and had a beer and some ice cream.

One of the main reasons I wanted to go was to see the crystal palace there- it was really pretty!

After the park, we decided to head back to the airbnb and get out of the heat- it was a heatwave, after all.

In the evening, we went out for another walk around Madrid. We grabbed some macarons and tapas at Mercado de San Miguel while we were out. (Macarons are kind of our thing).

We then wandered over to the Royal Palace again to check out the sunset and the night time scenery.

The next day, we went to the Temple of Debod and the Rosaleda of the Parque del Oeste which were both really photogenic! My post on that should come out in a couple of days, so be sure to stick around :)

Sunday, 23 July 2017

For breakfast on our first full day in Madrid, we decided to go for churros! And after churros, we had a good couple of hours exploring, including one of the places I'd most wanted to go to in Madrid- the botanic garden Real Jardín Botánico.

Thursday, 20 July 2017

So in mid-June, I finally got to visit Spain~ As a British person, not visiting Spain until I was 21 makes me somewhat of a rarity, especially because I'd studied Spanish for 7 years (although to be honest my Spanish is pretty rusty...) Unfortunately, I managed to arrive in Madrid in the middle of a heatwave, and with temperatures of up to ACTUAL 40 DEGREES (!!) we didn't do toooo much, but we did manage to chill and see some sights.